William E. Winters collection

William (Bill) E. Winters was born March 5, 1921, to John Henry Winters and Adeline Robinson Winters in Logan, West Virginia. Winters had nine brothers and sisters. His mother was one of the first and most fiery Pentecostal women in the Logan area. She witnessed to everyone and prayed for everyone’s salvation, including her own children. When Winters was a teenager, O.E. French came into town to preach a revival at the Logan Church of God. It was during that revival Winters gave his heart to the Lord and was called into ministry. He had a passion for sports, especially baseball, and was offered a chance to play for a semi-professional baseball team, the St. Louis Red Birds (which is now the Cardinals). Winters was too young to play and needed his parents to give permission to do so. His mother, who wanted him to be a minister, asked him to first go to the Church of God Bible Training School. If after one year he still wanted to be a professional baseball player, she would sign the form. He agreed. That was in 1940-41. He never became a Red Bird but a licensed minister in the Church of God in 1941.

Winters pastored his first church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was ordained in the COG in 1942. At the 1943 General Assembly in Birmingham, Alabama, Winters met Frieda. They had an immediate connection and soon after he returned home they began writing letters to one another. He finally sent her a telegram asking for her hand in marriage. She accepted and they were married in October 1943. The next day he met her parents. Winters and his new bride drove immediately to Cache, Michigan, to pastor their first church together. In 1946 he was ordained as a bishop.

Winters preached everywhere and to everyone. He preached in the boat and in bathroom, to his wife and to his three children. Everything he owned, he shared except his books. He kept those categorized by topic and knew where to find any book he was looking for. He read every morning and always had a book in his hand. Whenever God spoke to him or he had a thought he wrote it down. It didn’t matter what it was written on. His paper was made of just about anything he could find. He found God in nature, baseball, or anything else. Winters’s writings reflect his constant ideas about faith, hope, love, peace, thoughts.

The Winters spent the next thirty-two years pastoring in West Virginia and Ohio. As a pastor he cared deeply but had high expectations of his church members as well as his own family. Once when his son Bill was sick, Winters and his wife were told to keep him comfortable because he would not live through the night. Winters went to the church to pray and put a note on the door saying that Wednesday service was cancelled. When the church found out what was going on they all joined him at the church and prayed through the night until Bill was healed.

In 1977 Winters was appointed as the Evangelism Director for Southern Ohio, and immediately after that term he held the same position for Northern Ohio until 1984. During this time he was asked to write his first book, Convert Conservation. He wrote and published a series of inspirational notes with scriptures called “Pastoral Prescriptions.” It was to be left with the sick he visited because they were sometimes unaware that he had stopped by their hospital room. He also wrote Words that Breathe, Thoughts that Burn. Another work about faith which was never published.

After their appointment as Evangelism Director was over, the Winters went back into full-time pastoring for another three years. In 1987, when they decided it was time to retire, the Winters moved to Cleveland, Tennessee and entered into lay ministry at Westmore Church of God as visitation pastors. William E. Winters died on October 17, 1997. In his 56 years of ministry, he preached more than 9,050 sermons, 2,523 persons were converted /restored, 1,000 were sanctified, 975 were filled with the Holy Ghost, 371 were baptized in water, 576 members were added, and 14 churches were organized. His legacy will live through those changed lives and this collection of sermons.

SOURCES: Bill Winters (son) Frieda Winters (wife)